Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry
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Episodes
- Saul Williams : Martyr Loser King
Martyr Loser King, the debut graphic novel of poet, musician, actor and director Saul Williams, with art by Morgan Sorne, not only exists in the same world as his feature film Neptune Frost, but also that of three of his albums, one of his…
- From the Archives : Zadie Smith : Grand Union
Today’s classic episode from the archives with Zadie Smith was recorded in 2019 at the studios of KBOO community radio to discuss her story collection Grand Union. The conversation ranges wildly—from the politics of representation, of bein…
- Molly Crabapple : Here Where We Live Is Our Country : The Story of the Jewish Bund
One of the elements that makes Molly Crabapple’s latest book so remarkable is, not only the remarkable stories it unearths and retells, but more specifically how she tells these stories, these erased stories, these stories meant to be forg…
- Lily Brooks-Dalton : Ruins
Lily Brooks-Dalton’s Ruins is both a cleverly plotted page-turner, and an emotionally engaging, character-driven novel with an unforgettable protagonist; it’s both erudite and a wild ride, inviting and yet mysterious, only slowly revealing…
- From the Archives : Ted Chiang : Exhalation
Excited to share this classic episode from the archives with one of the great short storytellers of our time, Ted Chiang. This conversation happened in 2019 at the studios of KBOO community radio in Portland, Oregon. Blake Crouch speaking…
- Jordy Rosenberg : Night Night Fawn
Today’s conversation with Jordy Rosenberg is many things but at its heart it explores the question of what it means to write revolutionary literature (or as Trotsky would call it “October literature”). Whether we are talking about trans ho…
- Joan Naviyuk Kane : with snow pouring southward past the window
When Cynthia Cruz describes Joan Naviyuk Kane’s latest collection as a series of poems that “both shows and enacts how a self is brought to being through the abyss,” I think of Kane’s own words about poetry: as “a place of refuge and possi…
- From the Archives : Brandon Shimoda : The Grave on the Wall
Today’s episode is a classic from the archives, a conversation from 2019 with Brandon Shimoda about his book The Grave on the Wall. While the book centers on an exploration of Shimoda’s grandfather’s internment at Fort Missoula during Worl…
- Báyò Akómoláfé : Selah
What if we were to take seriously that we, as humans, aren’t the sole authors of our world, that there are other intelligences at play, that we are only one of many agents of change and transformation, and that “we” aren’t even entirely ou…
- Milkweed Live : Canisia Lubrin : The World After Rain
Canisia Lubrin returns to Between the Covers for a live conversation in downtown Portland, at Powell’s Bookstore, about her latest poetry collection The World After Rain. A private book, that Canisia never intended to publish, we explore w…
- From the Archives : Jake Skeets : Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers
Today’s episode is a classic from the archives, a conversation from 2019 with current Navajo Nation Poet Laureate Jake Skeets about his debut poetry collection Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers. Winner of the Whiting Award in poe…
- Sangamithra Iyer : Governing Bodies : A Memoir, A Confluence, A Watershed
“When I tell you a story about my body, I cannot separate it from a story about water. And a story about water is also a story about family. And a story about family is rooted in the earth…,” opens Sangamithra Iyer’s Governing Bodies. What…
- Lily Dunn : Into Being : The Radical Craft of Memoir and Its Power to Transform
In Into Being Lily Dunn explores the ways in which writing one’s life has the potential to transform it; how writing, if done well, can produce “symbolic repair.” We look at Virginia Woolf’s notion of “moments of being” as a means and meth…
- Randa Abdel-Fattah : Discipline
Randa Abdel-Fattah discusses her novel Discipline, set in Sydney during Ramadan 2021, focusing on two Palestinian protagonists confronting silence and complicity within their fields amidst heightened conflict and societal reactions.
- Jazmina Barrera : The Queen of Swords
Jazmina Barrera discusses her new book, "The Queen of Swords," an unconventional look at the life and work of Mexican writer Elena Garro, incorporating elements like cats, revolution, Tarot, and the CIA.
- Tin House Live : Caren Beilin : Sea Poison
Caren Beilin appears on Tin House Live to discuss her book Sea Poison. The conversation covers stolen plots, stolen uteri, medical Oulipo, botched eye surgeries, and dirty dancing.
- Tin House Live: Stephen Hayes
Painter Stephen Hayes discussed his exhibition “Elegy,” featuring twelve abstract paintings that engage with the genocide in Gaza. The conversation, held at Portland's Elizabeth Leach Gallery, explored his artistic process and the themes w…
- Robin Coste Lewis : Archive of Desire
This episode features Robin Coste Lewis discussing her poetry collection "Archive of Desire," which originated from a multidisciplinary project involving composer Vijay Iyer, cellist Jeffrey Zeigler, and visual artist Julie Mehretu. The di…
- Diana Arterian : Agrippina the Younger & Smoke Drifts
Diana Arterian joins Between The Covers to discuss her poetry collection "Agrippina the Younger" and her translation work on Nadia Anjuman's "Smoke Drifts." The conversation explores feminist approaches to historical archives, examining th…
- Olga Ravn : The Wax Child
Olga Ravn talks about her book, which uses primary sources to explore the 17th-century Danish witch trials through the perspective of a wax child. The discussion touches on the historical context of state and family, the fear of women, and…
- Rickey Laurentiis : Death of the First Idea
Poet Rickey Laurentiis discusses her new collection, Death of the First Idea, which took ten years to create. The poetry navigates themes of lyricism, identity, and transformation, drawing from diverse influences.
- Laynie Browne : Apprentice to a Breathing Hand
This episode discusses Laynie Browne's poetry collection "Apprentice to a Breathing Hand," which engages with the work of Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge. The conversation delves into the practice of writing homage, the relationship between language…
- Martha Anne Toll : Duet for One
Writer Martha Anne Toll discusses her novel Duet for One, focusing on how language can describe music and experiences beyond words. The conversation also covers her life journey towards writing, including influences from music and law.
- Rob Macaisa Colgate : Hardly Creatures & My Love is Water
Rob Macaisa Colgate joins Between The Covers to discuss his poetry collection Hardly Creatures and verse drama My Love is Water. They explore themes including disability, Filipino-American identity, queerness, and the intersection of Crip…
- Robert Macfarlane : Is a River Alive?
In this episode of Between The Covers, Robert Macfarlane discusses the idea of rivers possessing life, examining language, imagination, and the body's role in our connection to the environment. The conversation references literary works an…
- adrienne maree brown : Ancestors
With the arrival of Ancestors, the third and final book in adrienne maree brown’s Grievers Trilogy, we take the iconic frames she has created in her nonfiction work—emergent strategy, pleasure activism, fractal responsibility, loving corre…
- Madeleine Thien : The Book of Records
The Book of Records is many things: a book of historical fiction and speculative fiction, a meditation on time and on space-time, on storytelling and truth, on memory and the imagination, a book that impossibly conjures the lives and eras…
- Leanne Betasamosake Simpson : Theory of Water
What would it mean for our writing, thinking, and living if we looked to land as pedagogy, or if we thought of theory as something embodied and kinetic? In Theory of Water Leanne Betasamosake Simpson takes us not only outside the academy,…
- Keetje Kuipers : Lonely Women Make Good Lovers
From the craft of writing sex in poetry to the virtues of failing publicly, today’s conversation with poet Keetje Kuipers is not to be missed. We explore everything from storytelling within poems to the dialectic between control and wildne…
- Patrycja Humienik : We Contain Landscapes
What does it mean to risk rupture for rapture, on the page, and in one’s life? Or for water to be one’s method, mode or muse? Are inherited forms (of womanhood, of sexuality, of national identity) a gift or are their borders meant to be cr…
- Torrey Peters : Stag Dance
Four novellas, in four different genres—science fiction, horror, teen romance, and a western— Stag Dance not only interrogates genre, but gender through genre. Written over a ten year period, Torrey Peters’ new book spans a decade when her…
- Michelle de Kretser : Theory & Practice
Today’s guest, one of Australia’s most celebrated and daring writers, Michelle de Kretser, discusses her latest uncategorizable book Theory & Practice (one she describes as 80% fiction, 15% essay and 5% memoir). Theory & Practice is a book…
- Omar El Akkad : One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
In late October 2023, weeks into Israel’s bombing of northern Gaza, the novelist Omar El Akkad retweeted a video taken by a Gazan man. This video showed a lifeless moonscape with endless empty streets of rubble, every building, one to the…
- Hélène Cixous : Rêvoir
Feminist and literary theorist, playwright, philosopher, memoirist and novelist Hélène Cixous returns to the show to discuss her latest genre-defying hybrid work of prose. Written during the first year of the pandemic, Rêvoir explores the…
- Aria Aber : Good Girl
Poet Aria Aber’s debut novel Good Girl , set in the club scene of Berlin, is a book brimming over with sex and drugs and music, true. But really at its heart it is a book of self-making and unmaking, of self-destruction and self-discovery,…
- Zahid Rafiq : The World With Its Mouth Open
Today’s guest Zahid Rafiq discusses his debut short story collection The World With Its Mouth Open , eleven remarkable stories set in modern-day Kashmir. Prior to writing fiction Rafiq was a journalist and we explore the ways the stories h…
- Tin House Live : Denis Johnson : 2004
We started 2024 with an archival recording of Denis Johnson from the first ever Tin House Writers Workshop in 2003. That episode was a three-part episode: Denis Johnson reading from the manuscript of his novella Train Dreams, then being in…
- Rodrigo Fresán : Melvill
How can a novel set during one brief moment near the end of Herman Melville’s father’s life, a moment lost to history and now fully overshadowed by his son’s enduring literary legacy, become a portal to discuss the world entire? Melvill is…
- Dionne Brand : Salvage : Readings from the Wreck
What does it mean that a life can not only be animated by books but destroyed by them? That a self can be not only made by reading, but unmade by it? Dionne Brand’s latest book of nonfiction Salvage: Readings from the Wreck returns to form…
- Danez Smith : Bluff
Danez Smith’s poetry is so many things, a poetry of resistance, of elegy, of joy, of care, of repair. Their poetry is Afrofuturist and Afropessimist. It’s nature poetry, decolonial poetry, queer poetry, a poetry that is archival and docume…
- Kenzie Allen : Cloud Missives
Today’s conversation with Kenzie Allen, about her debut poetry collection Cloud Missives , is unusually wide-ranging. We look at the influence of archaeology, anthropology and cartography on her poetry, and on her notion of gaze within her…
- Tin House Live : Torrey Peters on Strategic Opacity
Today’s craft talk—by Torrey Peters on “Strategic Opacity”— was recorded at the 2024 Tin House summer writers workshop. Peters explores the elements in works of fiction that actually don’t make sense—from William Shakespeare to Elena Ferra…
- Jewish Currents Live : Dionne Brand & Adania Shibli in Conversation
As part of Jewish Currents Live: A Day of Politics & Culture , I moderated a conversation between Adania Shibli and Dionne Brand this September in New York City. Both Dionne and Adania have been on the show individually, and part of why I…
- Isabella Hammad : Recognizing the Stranger : On Palestine and Narrative
Today’s conversation with Isabella Hammad is truly like no other on the show in its fourteen year history. The main text of her book is the speech she delivered for the Edward Said Memorial Lecture in September of 2023. A remarkable speech…
- Tin House Live : Frank Bidart
Today’s episode is an archival recording of poet Frank Bidart from the 2008 Tin House Writers Workshop. It begins with an introduction by the poet Brenda Shaughnessy, followed by an extended poetry reading by Frank Bidart. After the readin…
- Nalo Hopkinson : Blackheart Man
Todays’ guest is Grand Master of science fiction and fantasy Nalo Hopkinson. Together we center her first novel in over a decade, the remarkable Blackheart Man, and look at what it means to not only write an alternate Caribbean history, bu…
- Vajra Chandrasekera : Rakesfall
Sri Lankan writer Vajra Chandrasekera’s first novel, The Saint of Bright Doors , was shortlisted for or won nearly every major SFF award there is. Much of the buzz around this book circled the question:”what exactly is this?” Saints not on…
- Carl Phillips : Scattered Snows, to the North
Today’s guest is one of the most singular and celebrated Anglophone poets writing today, Carl Phillips. We center his latest collection, Scattered Snows, to the North , his first since winning the 2023 Pulitzer prize in poetry. But we also…
- Shze-Hui Tjoa : The Story Game
Today’s guest, Shze-Hui Tjoa, has written a book that is remarkably unique. Is it an essay collection or a memoir? A detective story or a fantasy? A journey of self-individuation or an examination of power and control? Improbably it is all…
- Cecilia Vicuña : Deer Book
Today’s guest Chilean poet, performance artist, visual artist, activist, and filmmaker Cecilia Vicuña, joins us to discuss her latest work, Deer Book , or Libro Venado. A bilingual collection, with translations by the acclaimed poet and tr…